


Petalune

by antonomasia09



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bittersweet, Collection: Purimgifts Extras, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Painter Tora Ziyal, Tora Ziyal Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 05:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13804341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antonomasia09/pseuds/antonomasia09
Summary: Ziyal on Cardassia.





	Petalune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hhertzof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhertzof/gifts).



> Written as a pinch hit, but turned out it wasn't needed, so extra treat instead! Hope you like it! Dukat is still horrible, but Ziyal deserved some happiness.

There is no ore to be mined, no suffering prisoners to bring water to, just an empty house with huge windows looking out on the square below. Ziyal sits by the brightest and watches Cardassians hurrying past, all of them intent on their business. None of them ever pause and look around to meet the eyes of the girl above.

Even though Cardassia is much warmer than Dozaria, the only time Ziyal really feels comfortable is when her father is around. He tells her stories about the battles he’s won and about Ziyal’s own childhood, and his voice helps her push away the sounds of screaming that she still sometimes thinks she hears and the stench of unwashed bodies she still can’t get out of her nostrils.

One day, when Gul Dukat is gone arguing with the Detapa Council, she finds herself too restless to sit by the window. Instead, she decides to explore the house. Most of the doors are closed and locked, but in one she finds a desk full of paper and ink, with brushes strewn across its plain wooden surface.

She picks up a brush and dips it in the ink, then sweeps a long line across the paper. Then another, and another. The motion makes her mind go quiet, in a way it hasn’t been since before the mines. When she puts the brush down, an hour later, she’s not sure exactly what she’s drawn, but she thinks it looks like a garden she half-remembers from when she was young on Bajor.

The next day, when she picks the brush up again, she thinks about her mother. The curves of her face, the crinkle of her nose-ridges when she smiled. This time, her father walks in on her before she’s finished, and his hand on her shoulder startles her out of her vague trance.

“That’s Tora Naprem,” he says as she hunches over her painting, trying to hide it and blushing in a way that no full Cardassian could. “It’s beautiful,” he adds, and she looks up at him in surprise.

“You really like it?” she says. She’s not sure why he would. Not even sure how he recognized the subject of the painting. Her lines are sketchy and the eyes aren’t positioned quite right, and she hasn’t seen her mother in six years.

“I do,” he says. “You have a real talent.”

She’s been called weak and stupid and lazy by the Breen. Never talented. 

Ziyal wraps her arms around her father and clings to him tightly. “I miss her,” she whispers, trying to concentrate on the solidity of his body and not the tears prickling in her eyes.

He brings his own arms up to hold her close. “So do I,” he says. “I’m just grateful to have you.”

Ziyal lets herself cry in earnest, then, safe and warm and surrounded by her father’s love.

[](https://imgur.com/PWxjxCe)


End file.
